Music

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

When I think of Peter Boyle, certain images, certain characters inevitably come to mind-- the Monster, aka Zipperneck, “hphhhutteen arh dii Riiiiiiii” in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein (1974); Lucas, the no-bullshit bullshitting campaign manager to Robert Redford’s gossamer candidate in Michael Ritchie’s prescient 1972 film; Carl Laszlo, Esq., the first screen incarnation of Hunter S. Thompson’s belligerent, out-of-control lawyer, defending convicted pot smokers and running guns into the night in Where the Buffalo Roam (1980); Frank Barone, the crude, cynical and borderline vicious dad to Ray Romano’s beloved Raymond; even his role as a cop cut down in the line of duty who gets reincarnated into a crime-fighting dog in the 1990 TV pilot (which, mysteriously, was not picked up for a series run), Poochinski; and, of course, the bigoted, eponymous hardhat Joe (1970).

I was 10 years old when Joe became a sensation for its depiction of the brutally racist, potentially homicidal antihero Joe Curran, played by Boyle with just enough empathy, as he goes on a search through the counterculture underworld for a missing girl, whose father has killed her drug-dealing boyfriend, to make audiences (and, reportedly, Boyle himself) nervous. Obviously I was too young for such a movie. But I got to know Joe, and Boyle, through the Mad magazine parody of the film, dubbed in typical cornball fashion Shmoe. In fact, I think I saw and became used to Mort Drucker’s uncanny characterization of Boyle’s face and imposing working-man’s build before I ever laid eyes on the actor in anything other than a newspaper ad for Joe. So when Young Frankenstein came along, I definitely knew who Peter Boyle was, but I had no idea what he was like on screen, and I had no idea of the initial risk Brooks took in casting this man, largely known up to that point only for his earthy depictions of working class, often criminal characters in violent, gritty films like The Friends of Eddie Coyle and Steelyard Blues. But Brooks knew the actor had a comic heart, and he found a way to cut right to it; for all I knew, Boyle could have been a seasoned comedian when I first saw Young Frankenstein, so naturally did he come by the art of harvesting laughs.

But for all these well-observed, fascinating characters that he has brought to life, in bad films as well as good, I’ll most vividly remember Boyle for two specific performances. As Wizard, the taxi driver who hangs out at the all-night diner with a group of hacks that includes the insomniac loner Travis Bickle, Boyle is completely mesmerizing. When Travis comes to him, basically reaching out for some kind of recognizable human connection as his mind becomes increasingly overwhelmed by a crescendo of disillusionment, despair and loneliness, Wizard finds himself stuck between the world of men he’s used to living in, one in which emotions are kept in check and talk goes no further than current events, sports and their own economic miseries, and his natural impulse to try to help this socially inept man who fumbles his way toward something deeper than a typical conversation. Boyle’s hulking frame, as he leans up against his taxi, makes him look, in comparison to Bickle, like a bastion of stability and common sense, and the audience sees Wizard, as it does most everything in Taxi Driver through Bickle’s eyes—Bickle sees Wizard, a man he has had no real meaningful connection to in the past, as the one person who might help him make sense of the warring impulses in his heart and mind. Boyle imbues the man, who has only one other brief scene in the movie, with the qualities that make you believe Wizard is somehow close to the type of person Bickle might have related to in his long distant past. As Wizard tries to work his way toward some way to give something to this strange man in obvious need, he achieves his own kind of eloquence, that of a man who cannot communicate comfortably but senses the urgency of doing so. Yet Wizard misses Bickle's most obvious admission of his tortured inner life-- "I get some real crazy ideas, you know?"-- because of the simple enjoyment he's taking in being seen, even by someone as disturbed as Bickle, as being worthy of the kind of respect that would cause another man to ask him for advice. When Wizard retreats to the cover of platitudes and self-deprecation, you can feel Bickle slipping further away, and you can sense on Wizard’s face that, despite his reassurances, this “killer” will not be all right.

In case you can’t get to a DVD player right now, here’s the scene between Bickle and Wizard, from BFI’s published version of Paul Schrader’s script:

EXT.

TRAVIS follows WIZARD out onto the sidewalk. TRAVIS followsWIZARD as he walks toward his cab. He has something on hismind, something he wants to talk to WIZARD about.

TRAVIS (walking) Hey Wiz.

WIZARD leans back against the cab. TRAVIS is about to speakwhen he spots a GROUP of BLACK and PUERTO RICAN STREETPUNKS, ages 12-15, jiving down the sidewalk toward him. ONEtosses a spray paint can around his back, basketball style.ANOTHER mocks as if he's going to scratch a key along one ofthe cabs.

WIZARD has no visible reaction. A flash of controlled angercrosses TRAVIS' face. He stares at the BOY with the poisedkey. It is the same look that crossed his face in theHarlem Deli. We are reminded with a jolt that the killerlies just beneath TRAVIS' surface.

The BLACK PUNK must instinctively realize this too, becausehe makes a cocky show of putting the key back into hispocket and be-bopping around TRAVIS and WIZARD.

The YOUNG MEAN-STREETERS continue down the street and TRAVISturns back to WIZARD.

Across the street, in the background, a JUNKIE nestles in adoorway.

TRAVIS (hesitant) Wiz?

WIZARD Yeah?

TRAVIS Look, ah, we never talked much, you and me...

WIZARD Yeah?

TRAVIS I wanted to ask you something, on account you've been around so long.

WIZARD Shoot. They don't call me the Wizard for nothing.

TRAVIS Well, I just, you know...

WIZARD Things got ya down?

TRAVIS Real down.

WIZARD It happens.

TRAVIS Sometimes it gets so I just don't know what I'm gonna do. I get some real crazy ideas, you know? Just go out and do somethin.

WIZARD The taxi life, you mean.

TRAVIS Yeah.

WIZARD (nods) I know.

TRAVIS Like do anything, you know.

WIZARD Travis, look, I dig it. Let me explain. You choose a certain way of life. You live it. It becomes what you are. I've been a hack 27 years, the last ten at night. Still don't own my own cab. I guess that's the way I want it. You see, that must be what I am.

A police car stops across the street. TWO PATROLMEN get outand roust the JUNKIE from his doorway.

WIZARD (continuing) Look, a person does a certain thing and that's all there is to it. It becomes what he is. Why fight it? What do you know? How long you been a hack, a couple months? You're like a peg and you get dropped into a slot and you got to squirm and wiggle around a while until you fit in.

TRAVIS (pause) That's just about the dumbest thing I ever heard, Wizard.

WIZARD What do you expect, Bertrand Russell? I've been a cabbie all my life, what do I know? (a beat) I don't even know what you're talking about.

TRAVIS Neither do I, I guess.

WIZARD You fit in. It's lonely, it's rough at first. But you fit in. You got no choice.

WIZARD Yeah. Sorry, Wizard.

WIZARD Don't worry, Killer. You'll be all right. (a beat) I seen enough to know.

The other performance that I take as a gift straight from Peter Boyle is his brilliant, Emmy-winning characterization as Clyde Bruckman, a lonely insurance salesman cursed with the ability to foretell the circumstances of other people’s deaths, and unable to stop conjuring up dream images about his own. In Darin Morgan’s amazingly lucid, limber and funny script for "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose," one of the best hours in the entirety of the The X-Files, Bruckman is dryly amusing. But Boyle’s unique ability to access pathos without lapsing into embarrassing overmodulation, and the clarity of his stare as he doles out the most ominous information with the surety and matter-of-factness of a slightly bored salesman, is perfect to fully flesh out the painful comedy and longing buried between the lines of Morgan’s words. Boyle richly deserved the award he received for this episode, and the rejuvenated career that followed on Everybody Loves Raymond as a result. Thanks must go to Morgan for writing such a wonderful story as “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose,” but even more so, I think, to Boyle, who, along with Gillian Anderson (Scully) and David Duchovny (Mulder), truly turned this into a classic stand-alone episode, one of the best of any TV show I’ve ever seen. Imagine this exchange between the three actors, and then go home and watch it. I can think of no better tribute to Peter Boyle, on the occasion of his death, from complications related to heart disease, than this.

CLYDE BRUCKMAN: I guess you run into a lot of dead bodies in your line of work.

SCULLY: You get used to it.

CLYDE BRUCKMAN: I never have. I'm not sure you're supposed to.

MULDER: Do you remember the first time you foresaw someone's death?

CLYDE BRUCKMAN: 1959.

MULDER: What happened in 1959?

CLYDE BRUCKMAN: Buddy Holly's plane crashed.

SCULLY: You prognosticated Buddy Holly's death?

CLYDE BRUCKMAN: Oh, God, no. Why would I want to do that? But I did have a ticket to see him perform the next night. Actually, I was a bigger fan of the Big Bopper than Buddy Holly. "Chantilly Lace," that was the song.

MULDER: I'm not following.

(Bruckman sighs. They stop walking.)

CLYDE BRUCKMAN: There's-- The Big Bopper was not supposed to be on the plane with Buddy Holly. He won the seat from somebody else by flipping a coin for it.

MULDER: I'm still not following.

CLYDE BRUCKMAN: Imagine all the things that had to occur, not only in his life, but in everybody else's, to arrange it so on that particular night, the Big Bopper would be in a position to live or die depending on a flipping coin. I became so obsessed with that idea that I gradually became capable of seeing the specifics of everybody's death.

SCULLY: Well, Mister Bruckman, I'm not one who readily believes in that kind of thing and if I was, I still wouldn't believe that story.

CLYDE BRUCKMAN: I know it sounds crazy, but I swear it's true. I was a bigger fan of the Big Bopper than Buddy Holly.

7 comments:

Roughly around this time last year, at a film premiere in New York, I turned around from a urinal to find myself unexpectedly face to face with Mr. Boyle. Obviously, I didn’t speak to him, but I do recall that he looked quite frail. I remember that I couldn’t recall the last time I had seen him in a film, or on TV (not a fan of “Raymond), but thought it was wonderful that he was out to support his former director Mel Brooks, and the new version of THE PRODUCERS.

There’s nothing I can really add to this lovely tribute, as you’ve singled out Boyle’s handful of truly great performances. But, strangely enough, I happened to see a few minutes of a rerun of "Raymond" a couple of months ago and began to recognize some of Boyle's dialogue; I later discovered online that Boyle had been reciting some of Wizard’s choice advice in a strange, but welcome-for-primetime-TV, homage.

I notice that the first season of “Saturday Night Live” hits stores today, with an episode hosted by Boyle featuring the memorable “Dueling Brandos” sketch with John Belushi. That might make for a nice tribute.

MGM-- thanks for checking in on this sad day. Wow, I'd love to stumble upon that Wizard homage sometime. My wife and I watched Raymond pretty regularly until about six years ago, so it probably occurred sometime since then. I'd like to think I'd have remembered it otherwise.

And thanks for the reminder about "Dueling Brandos"-- yet another reason to scour the shelves at CostCo this weekend to see if that Saturday Night Live box is available at a discount.

I recall someone in the blogosphere saying not too long ago that it's strange and disconcerting being of an age now where it's not just the stars of a bygone age-- Jimmy Stewart, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Bette Davis-- that are passing on, but also those people who made their mark making films that were important to us in our youth, when we were young, impressionable, aching to absorb all we could and learning to love and appreciate films as entertainment and art. This blogger remarked that he was getting tired of writing obituaries, that he did not want to end up seeming like the go-to guy for death notices. I understand that feeling, and I don't feel like mentioning everyone who dies because, as this blogger mentioned, if I did this would quickly morph into one long obituaries page and little else. But I find it hard not to say a few words in remembrance of the artists who really did mean something to me, and Peter Boyle was definitely one of those.

Good to hear from you, MGM! I was just thinking about you the other day, on Joe Dante's birthday, as a matter of fact. How are things going? Staying busy, I'll bet! I miss your comments, and I hope you'll be able to take some time for Professor Jennings' new quiz. If you can't, drop me a line sometime and we'll catch up!

Yeah, I watched the Boyle episode on the SNL box and Dueling Brandos is priceless (I hope somebody puts it up on YouTube), along with the Richard Pryor and Desi Arnaz episodes. Fascinating to see how awkwardly constructed the original shows were: bad comics, dancing little girls, those awful Muppets interludes and...ABBA! But, then, there were bees, land sharks, Samurai Divorce Court, Albert Brooks movies, Andy Kaufman and Chevy Chase being much funnier than he's given credit for today.

It is worth noting, I think, that though "Claude Bruckheimer's Final Repose" had perhaps 12 or 13 times the amount of dialogue as a normal X-Files episode, it was still lovingly and impeccably-- if maybe a little begrudingly-- closed-captioned.

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